APPARITION OF SILUVA, LITHUANIA

In 1608, a number of Calvinist or Protestant children were playing near Siluva when they heard the sound of a woman crying. They looked at a big rock and suddenly a woman appeared with a child. She was dressed in blue and white and had red flowing hair. The apparition was reported to their Calvinist ministers and elders and the ministers and elders allegedly found they could find no problems with the story. The children all told the same account. The next day a Calvinist minister Mikola Fiera preached to the people who having heard about the apparition gathered at the rock. He declared the story to be pure superstition. Suddenly it is said the apparition appeared at the rock to him and all the people. Most of the people later decided to learn about Catholicism and convert. Fr John Kazakevicius was sent by the Church to investigate the apparition and he became the parish priest. It turned out that a priest was cured of blindness by touching the rock and he declared that he had hidden a trunk of mass vessels and vestments and missals and sacred items below the rock decades before after the populace had abandoned the Catholic faith. The bishop accepted the apparition as authentic and a shrine was created. A picture of the Madonna and child that was found in the trunk was put on display in the shrine.

The Church was prone to error far more in those days than it is more recently. For example, it says that during the apparitions of Mary at Banneux in 1933 that the visionary Beco was tripping and falling and fell into a spring of water. She then claimed afterwards that the Virgin told her to discover it and fall into it. The sensible person sees that it was found accidentally and she lied that it was all planned. Yet the Church regarded those apparitions and the witness as dependable! If it made such a mess when it accepted the Beco visions it is hard to trust its opinion of the Siluva ones.